“Maybe he’s feeling the pressure.”
“Maybe.” Brodie shrugged. “But if the bastard is anything, he’s deliberate; I’ve never known him to rush into anything.”
“The steaks are almost done,” Cait announced.
“The plates are in that cabinet over there, Cait. Brodie, what about weapons?”
“Compared to the other side, we’re seriously underarmed. Always have been. And we’re hamstrung by the fact that we don’t have any kind of official status or authority. We can’t just rush in and start blasting, as good as that might feel to some of us. Plus, we don’t want the kind of violence that makes headlines any more than Duran does. The only defense we have if bodies start turning up is not going to be believed, and our credibility is shot once we start talking about some vast conspiracy we can’t prove exists.” He shook his head. “No, we have to be very, very careful. In any kind of a showdown with Duran and his goons, we are critically handicapped.”
Cait tuned them out, feeling even more frustrated. She had nothing to contribute, that was the problem. She was still learning how to handle weapons, and she didn’t have the first idea how to plan for some kind of dramatic confrontation with the bad guys.
In fact, she felt incredibly useless.
They wouldn’t let her help clean up after the meal, and since by then much of her energy and all of her anxiety had returned, Sarah found herself moving restlessly around the living room while they worked in the kitchen.
The need to find Tucker was nearly overpowering now, and with it came the niggling awareness of something else that was…wrong. She didn’t know what it was, but somewhere, sometime, she had missed something she should have paid attention to. Information or an observation…something. Whatever it was, it seemed to be out of reach now; whenever she tried to concentrate on it, all she got was increasing uneasiness and the urge to look back over her shoulder.
Watching. Somebody’s watching. But is it me, or Tucker? The uneasiness he felt about that went with him into his dreams…
That was part of her apprehension, she knew. That skin-crawling sensation of being watched had been uppermost in Tucker’s consciousness just before his keepers had knocked him out once again, and even now his sleeping mind was giving him nightmares with that theme. Eyes watching him. Creatures watching him.
Sarah wasn’t exactly caught up in the nightmares with Tucker; it was more like listening to the dim and distant sound of a television in the next room and being aware of what was going on there. She could push the faint sounds out of her conscious mind by concentrating on something else, but they were always there just under the surface, contributing to her uneasiness.
“Sarah?”
She turned to look at them as Brodie, Leigh, and Cait returned to the living room. “There isn’t much time.”
“Why not?” Leigh asked quietly. “The trap is baited and ready for you; won’t they just wait for you to come?”
“I…don’t know. I don’t think so. There’s a feeling of urgency.”
“Maybe that’s just you,” Brodie suggested. “Your need to get to Mackenzie.”
She shook her head. “No, this is something else. Somebody’s anxious, worried about time passing. I’m sure of it.”
Leigh looked at her for a moment, then said, “Let’s sit down. Sarah, do you think you can sense where Tucker is being kept?”
“If he was awake, I know I could. But he’s still asleep. Dreaming.”
Leigh waited until they were all sitting down before suggesting, “Try anyway. Try to concentrate on his physical sensations rather than his emotions. You may be able to shut out his dreams that way.”
Sarah was hesitant, wary of his nightmares, but she closed her eyes and tentatively reached out toward Tucker. Instantly, gooseflesh rose sharply along her arms and she shivered in a wave of coldness. It was very cold here, and very damp; there was water dripping somewhere. And another sound, very faint. Breathing. Someone’s breathing.
She was lying on her side on something not quite as hard as the floor, and it was dark when she opened her eyes. It should have been too dark to see, but she thought she could anyway, though more with another sense than with her eyes. She got up cautiously, vaguely aware of leaving something behind her and hating that, but intensely aware that she had to see what she could of this place.
She moved soundlessly several feet and then stopped, abruptly. Someone was right beside her. She couldn’t see him, but she felt him. She almost touched him.
Shadows.